


new age

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [20]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, Culture Shock, Gen, Gore, Strong Language, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-06-27 07:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19786570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Adiris is the oldest of the Entity’s servants, and as such, has missed much.





	new age

**Author's Note:**

> Adiris is a tricky one, because she’s so old. It’s difficult to do internal dialogue for someone who was around pre-Cleopatra.

Time is not quite meaningless in the Entity’s realm.  
  
Adiris sees that now.  
  
[---]  
  
_What is this?_  
  
She sets her censer on the ground, kneels beside the whirring contraption and setting a hand on it: It vibrates beneath her fingers. A pole extends from it, and at the very top there is a bright light. Adiris is hesitant to tinker with it, and it takes several trials for her to realize that these strange machines are what their human prey use to open the doors, to escape from the woods the Entity has summoned them to.  
  
It used to be cranks.  
  
It used to be wooden cranks the humans would have to use, manipulating a delicate mechanism that would then force the doors open. It had been simple enough for Adiris to understand.  
  
Now, it is these strange, metal machines that make so much noise and light.  
  
[---]  
  
**_BZZZZT._**  
  
“ _AHHHH!_ ”  
  
**_BZZZZT._**  
  
“ _AHHHH!_ ”  
  
Adiris frowns as she navigates the corridors of the building.  
  
She dislikes the confines of these strange buildings that have come to inhabit the Entity’s realm. The floors and walls are made of unfamiliar materials she doesn’t recognize, and there are always strange and unpleasant smells that accompany them- and Adiris has developed a tolerance for undesirable smells, having been surrounded by sickness and disease for so long.  
  
This, in particular, is the Doctor’s domain: It is a claustrophobic building full of twisting, confusing hallways and machines as unfamiliar as the _generators_ that now inhabit the Entity’s trials.  
  
When she enters the room, she sees the Doctor bent over a body strapped to one of his tables. This is a human left behind from the last trial, abandoned by her companions, and her screams are muffled by the gag in her mouth. Adiris watches as the doctor presses two small hand-held devices to her temples-  
  
**_BZZZZT._**  
  
“ _Ahhhhh!_ ”  
  
Her screams are weaker. She’s dying.  
  
The Doctor turns, sees Adiris. He reaches out, offering her the devices- he could be smiling, but it’s difficult to tell with that curious device stretching his mouth into an eerie grimace. He wiggles the devices, nodding and making a little, affirmative noise. He wants her to take them, use them.  
  
Adiris holds up a hand, shakes her head. Not many of the Entity’s servants speak, at least not much (and even when they do, she doesn’t understand them), and so she’s learned to make simple gestures to state her point.  
  
The Doctor shrugs, and goes back to his dying patient.  
  
Adiris leaves the building and returns to the woods.  
  
[---]  
  
The Clown is…  
  
…Colorful.  
  
The lights, the tents, the carts of his caravan are multicolored, shades of red and white and yellow that may have been brighter once, outside of the Entity’s realm where colors seem muted.  
  
The Clown himself often sits amidst his lonely caravan, drinking from bottles of foul liquid when there are no trials being conducted. He glances up as Adiris approaches, but doesn’t react very strongly. The Clown himself is as perplexing as the Doctor in some ways: His outfit is strange, his make-up is outrageous, and he may be the fattest man Adiris has ever seen; in her homeland, there had rarely been enough food to make a man as fat as the Clown was.  
  
At his side sat a strange horse, warped by the Entity’s power: It had three eyes, and was decayed as though it were dead even though it still moved. It must have been an advantage, having an animal companion during the trials that could make noise and alert the Entity’s servants to a human.  
  
Adiris observes the Clown. He says something, but as with all of the Entity’s servants, she doesn’t understand him. “I do not understand,” She says simply.  
  
“Uh?” The Clown proffers the bottle he’d been drinking from to her, gives it a little shake.  
  
Adiris does not take it. In the temple of her youth, in her faith, there had been the occasional drinking of wine, and the light smoking of various herbs; none of the heavier alcohols or drugs indulged by the masses. She does not know exactly what is in the Clown’s bottles, but she knows that whatever it is makes his victims wobble and fall. How he drinks it without suffering the same effects is beyond her.  
  
The Clown shrugs. “Meh.” He takes another swig of the liquid, and belches.  
  
Adiris’s eyes gaze around the caravan, the colors odd and, for some reason, grating to her senses. The horse raises its head and offers a warped, screeching whinny, and Adiris recoils with disgust. Every other animal in this realm- that is to say, the crows and the rats- are normal. Why this one ended up warped is a mystery to her.  
  
She turns and retreats to the woods, the whinny echoing after her.  
  
[---]  
  
Some of the realms are interesting.  
  
Adiris had heard of snow in her time in the waking world, a far-off phenomena that took place in countries and lands not as hot and humid as hers. In this realm, the snow cakes the ground in places; when she walks over it, it soaks the bottom of her dress and leaves a mild chill on her ankles.  
  
Oh, what a relief snow might have been when she was sick and her body had been ravaged by fever. How wonderful it would have been to put some on the sores that had covered her skin, had stung so badly when they’d chafed against the bandages. Adiris comes to a stop, momentarily consumed by the memories of the cave where she’d spent her final days, of the pain and the stench of vomit and death.  
  
A shriek echoes through the woods, and it snaps Adiris out of the past.  
  
In the distance, the Ghost is concluding a trial. The walls of the realm do not exist for the Entity’s servants the way they do for the humans that are attempting to escape the Entity’s realm, but Adiris still knows it is not her place to interfere with the Ghost’s trial. She uses the Entity’s power to gently dissolve a section of the wall, standing in the gap to prevent an escape.  
  
The Ghost has just caught a victim, and this time there is no sacrifice: He sits on the victim’s back, where he stabs him; then he stabs them in the side, then the back again. The Ghost pulls something out of his pocket, and then grabs the victim by his hair, yanking his head back as blood pours from his mouth. Then, he raises a small device in front of them. A small ‘click!’ and a flash of light later he stands up, tapping at the device for a moment before stowing it somewhere in his robes.  
  
He catches sight of Adiris, does a double-take, and then offers her a cheery little wave, a greeting. He’s a curious killer, this one: His movements are almost comically exaggerated when he moves, even when he’s killing.  
  
Adiris frowns, and then lifts a hand and returns the wave hesitantly.  
  
The Ghost returns it with another wave, a finger-wiggle, really, before crouching down and running off to find his next victim.  
  
Adiris shakes her head.  
  
_Where does the Entity find these strange creatures?_  
  
[---]  
  
It’s not long after leaving the Ghost’s trial that she hears something echoing through the trees:  
  
“ _LET’S JUST KILL EVERYONE AND LET YOUR GOD SORT THEM OUT-_ ”  
  
Adiris edges forward.  
  
There are four figures dancing outside of a large, wooden house: They raise their arms to the sky and gyrate their hips, hooting ecstatically. They are Legion, four killers as one group.  
  
Adiris pulls back, grimacing against the noise. This, she thinks, is supposed to be music: The little ones with the masks seem to think so, because they dance to it with wild abandon as it echoes through the otherwise silent forest. But to her it is loud and grating, a cacophony that holds no beauty or joy or solemnity. There was beautiful music in her temple in its heyday, before the sickness had killed so many.  
  
This is nothing like that.  
  
One of the Legion stops dancing. Three of them are distinguishable only by the subtly different designs on their masks, but there is one that is distinguishable by the long pink hair that falls out from beneath her hood. It is this member of the Legion that stops short and cocks her head at Adiris.  
  
Then she motions for Adiris to come- _come! come!_ \- to their circle, to their strange music and their dancing.  
  
It’s a decidedly friendly gesture. These servants of the Entity are the only ones with connections to one another, the only ones that were truly bonded in friendship in both the living world and the Entity’s. It is touching that this one should reach out to Adiris and offer companionship.  
  
By now the others have stopped too, and are watching Adiris with interest. They do not beckon her as their friend does, but they do not discourage her either.  
  
Adiris does not like this music, and she finds their dancing strange.  
  
She does not join them, but instead lingers on the side and watches.  
  
[---]  
  
As always, Adiris eventually returns to her Temple of Purgation.  
  
The stone is ancient and familiar, and the fountains’ designs are comfortingly familiar of her home and life. She descends to the basement, where the architecture is at its most immersive: She cannot see the forest beyond it.  
  
Adiris sits amongst the stone of her former home, all that is left of her life in the Entity’s realm, and feels peace.  
  
-End


End file.
